For whom the digital bell tolls : persona, the self, and the mourning of musicians on social media sites

Abstract

This thesis examines how the mourning of popular music artists occurs on social media sites. It argues that online spaces inform and uncover new ways for people to mourn the musical artists that have contoured their lives and that, in mourning these artists, audiences are really mourning themselves. The project explores and analyses the data from two social media sites – Reddit and Instagram – and the posts, photographs, and drawings harvested from these sites in the immediate twenty-four hours after the death of three artists: David Bowie, George Michael and Leonard Cohen. The death of each artist is framed through discussions of their persona both within their earlier lives and in the period before their deaths. These personas are then discussed in conjunction with three different conceptual and analytical areas of focus: Narrative, Evocative Objects and Photographs. The thesis is split into five chapters. The first considers how different theorists have constructed, examined and understood mourning in the 20th century and how this manifests on social media in the 21st century. The second chapter considers how David Bowie’s death was discussed on Reddit, and the narratives of mourning that arose with these posts. The third chapter details the ways George Michael’s death was presented on Instagram, and how sites of mourning are remediated. The fourth chapter considers how photographs were used whilst mourning Leonard Cohen, and how words and music converge in online depictions of mourning. The final section details how the social media poster is located at the centre of the mourning process and how the analytical data proves that the mourners are mourning a part of themselves. By considering how these artists are mourned on social media sites, we can understand the ways technology has shaped, informed and, at times, changed how we mourn in the 21st century.